On the Dark Knight

Its 2022, and another Batman film is here - this time Robert Pattinson, Twilight's infamous Sparkly Vampire, dons the suit of the caped crusader. Invariably, it has drawn comparisons to Christopher Nolan's 2008 film - The Dark Knight.

Even though it was released 14 years ago, it still is held as the gold standard to any superhero movie made post-2008. A cursory answer can be given:

The Dark Knight is a visual, auditory, and thematic masterpiece, with plenty of credit due to Hans Zimmer's score, Nolan's IMAX cinematography and action scenes, Heath Ledger's Oscar Winning performance as the Joker, and a great supporting cast of Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes, Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent, and of course Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne.

Interestingly enough, we can say that about every Oscar Best Picture winner over the last 20 years, yet, The Dark Knight persists through the years; every DCEU film tries to stick the landing like Nolan, MCU films entirely shied away from the Nolan gritty superhero movies to action and adrenaline filled scenes. Maybe it's the insanely quotable lines - " Why so Serious?", or "You either die a hero, or see yourself live long enough to become the villain", or maybe the gritty realism portrayed in the film, but I personally think it persists because of the social commentary it gave throughout the film.

The film was released in July 14, 2008, two months before the Housing Bubble collapse, and was also deep into the primaries of the Presidential General Election, where McCain and Obama were the presumptive Republican and Democratic nominees. The excess of wealth, market mania, from 2001 onwards had reached its zenith, and bankers and hedge fund managers could not start to ignore the ever-growing writing on the wall. America was deep into Iraq and Afghanistan, Osama had not been captured, and the War on Terror was in full swing.

The Dark Knight masterfully sets the tension of 2008 into the film - the film never lets up, from minute 1 of the Bank Heist to the very end of the film where Bruce Wayne is running away from the police - there is no place for the audience to stop or breathe. At the core of the film, the moment where the Joker and the Batman sit across each other and talk, is truly exceptional because it captures so much about what America was about in 2008.

The Joker, with no identifiable markings except for his memorable physical appearance with a crazy purple suit, white clown makeup, green hair, and the red lipstick on his Glasgow Smile, represents chaos. He is an actor with no rational desires, he just wants to see the world burn. He is not intimidated by Batman, but revels in being the perfect antithesis to what Batman stands for. The Joker represents the stateless terrorists in the War on Terror; people who cannot be intimidated by the might of U.S.A., but managed to bring the nation to its knees in its long drawn out war from 9/11 onwards. Batman, the vigilante, on the other hand represents U.S.A. He is the billionaire playboy, reflective of the U.S.'s massive wealth. He is the vigilante fighting crime with expensive hardware (Batmobile, Batcycle,etc) - U.S cosplays as the world justice keeper on the grand stage with its ridiculously expensive military toys - aircraft carriers, etc.

But whats perhaps more key about this scene is how little the Joker is intimidated by Batman - he even laughs out loud "You have nothing to threaten me with! Nothing to do with all your strength!" And Batman keeps beating him senseless, frustrated not knowing what to do with the Joker. By remaining unidentifiable, Nolan set the Joker up as the representative of how truly frustrating the War on Terror is - It doesn't matter how many bombings, drone strikes, or rounds that the U.S military does or kills people, someone will always come and take a place in the ranks of extremism.

Terrorists are not a nation-state that U.S. can sanction with, reason with, or invade, and this asymmetrical warfare would end up hurting U.S more than it would hurt the perpetrators - for example, the ceding of personal liberties of normal American citizens to the three letter agencies post 9/11 with conversations, messages, movements being tracked and monitored. In fact, it shows this idea in the movie during the climax of Batman trying to catch the joker - Bruce had converted every phone in the city as a sonar receiver so that he could see the entirety of the city through a massive screen and track people. Even though it was successful in catching the Joker, it does beg the question - was the invasion and ceding of liberties justified, and were the Bush era Patriot Act measures as helpful as it claimed to be or did it do more harm than good?

A key point in the middle of the film comes when people start asking chicken-or-egg question - did Batman create the Joker? The film goes on to say this explicitly, Joker states to Bruce Wayne- "I think you and I are destined to do this forever, this is what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object." The reason 2008 hurt so much because the crash was the cause of disconnect between the average American citizen and type of people like 100 dollar lunch tipping Investment bankers in Lehman Brothers - the crash was burdened on American Tax Payers, while the banks were bailed out ("Too Big to Fail,") the investment managers were not prosecuted while entire lifetimes of savings and wealth was wiped out. Furthermore with globalisation, the average American had lost a lifetime of jobs, had worthless degrees with unpayable student loans, and a general discontent at the Neoliberal elite.

The Joker's desire to burn the establishment to the ground, to cripple Batman and show who he is, was more or less a part that I feel that many resonated with.

Batman was fighting crime with violence, he wasn't really addressing the root of the crime in the first place - displaced people with a lack of job opportunities in Gotham. The irony is even more that Bruce Wayne is a billionaire, if he wanted to, he could have set up charities, implemented programs, etc. But instead he is out every night beating petty criminals to a pulp.

Funny enough, the Joker's fee for killing the Batman, is not even a fixed number, he just wants half of the entire Mob's money, and then once he receives his fee, he just burns the entire stack of bills, laughing all the time at the Mob's painful grimaces at watching all the money burn. Money was the main driver of the housing bubble, and once when there was no more money left to be made, the bankers took the ball and went home leaving everyone behind. Inflicting pain where it hurt the most was the Joker's modus operandi; people clamored to have the bankers and the investment managers prosecuted/fined etc.

And finally, the The Dark Knight warns against idolatry, or putting too much faith in one person. The Joker's main goal was to turn Harvey Dent, or Batman against their own ideals and people's perception of them. Harvey Dent was the promising District Attorney that people in Gotham voted for - he was called the "White Knight of Gotham", and his campaign slogan was "I believe in Harvey Dent." (At this point, I am sure you can figure out where I am going with this). Obama's 2008 campaign slogan was "Change we can believe in."

Nothing hits as hard when Harvey Dent loses his mind after Joker kills his love, Rachel Dawes, and goes on a murderous rampage, undoing all his good work in prosecuting the Mob. Harvey fell from the pedestal he was placed upon, and Batman had to take responsibility of Harvey's crimes so that Gotham could be free from Joker's grasp. But more so, there is a significant central focus of the film on the appeal and charm of Harvey Dent, and the pure hope in his ability to finally fix Gotham for good.

2008 was Obama's year - his idea of Hope, that he can bring change to America; the first potential black president with significant support through the entirety of America. His logo was legitimately the American flag redesigned as a sun rising over the land! His hope was contagious, and people looked into him like a man who could walk on water. I remember that night on November 2nd, in the basement of our new home, watching Indiana get called for Obama. I remember during his inauguration, we all sat in front of the TV in class with little American flags watching is inaugural speech.

But once his tenure sat in, and the realisation that Obama is also a neoliberal career politician, I am sure had its effect on people. He lost support at the state level and local levels; he lost majorities in both houses of congress; etc.

But compared to the Obama in 2008, to the Obama that ultimately left office in 2016 is a pretty stark difference, and its easy to blame him for many failures, but there were a lot of forces that worked against him (Republican Obstructionism, etc). He had inspired a lot of hope, and it slowly worked against him (deserves another blog post on its own).

The Dark Knight had a key feature that many films lacked, its timing of its release helped land its thematic elements perhaps more eloquently than it would have if it had launched sometime later. Nolan is famous for incorporating social situations into his films; but ultimately what led to its enduringness was that it never was a superhero movie; it was a social commentary with superhero elements.

Like many social commentary films - Citizen Kane, Parasite, Deer Hunter, Taxi Driver, Zanjeer (for Bollywood folks) - it endures because of its ability to portray larger themes through its acting and story. And more so now, because many of its themes still resonate today, a mix of nostalgia, realism, and collective agreement - even though there will be plenty of films who will end up being better than The Dark Knight, we will keep comparing everything to it because it was a reflection of key themes in our lives that shape the world we live in today.